“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. – J Robert Oppenheimer.

All Of Paraguay’s Temperature Record Has Been Tampered With

After identifying that all of the three rural stations currently operational in Paraguay had had huge warming adjustments made to their data since the 1950’s, I tended to assume that they had been homogenised against some of the nearby urban stations. Ones like Asuncion Airport, which shows steady warming since the mid 20thC.

Silly me! When I went back to check the raw data, it turns out all of the urban sites had been tampered with in just the same way as the rural ones.

Let me state again. These warming adjustments have taken place at every single, currently operational site in Paraguay.

Apparently, Mosher has been arm waving, and telling us that the station I originally highlighted, Puerto Casado, must have “moved”, although he cannot tell us where or when. Or why, indeed, such a move would have caused something like 2C of difference.

But it now seems that all nine stations moved somewhere much colder, probably Patagonia!

The reality is that, as far as the story of temperature adjustments is concerned, the genie is out of the bottle now, and no amount of huffing and puffing will put it back.

What is perhaps most telling is that we have not heard a word from NCDC or GISS. We expect the jokers from BEST to jump in, but this data and the associated adjustments are from NCDC and GISS.

Serious accusations have been levelled against them in the media, yet they have not responded or attempted to defend their data. Instead, they seem intent to sweep the matter under the carpet, just as they did last summer when they told us “the system was working as it was supposed to”!

But it gets worse!

GISS are supposed to make a “homogenisation adjustment”, to allow for UHI bias, the sort of thing you would expect to see at Asuncion Airport, Paraguay’s main gateway, handling over 800,000 passengers a year.

However, far from increasing historic temperatures to allow for UHI, GISS has done the opposite and decreased temperatures prior to 1972 by 0.4C.

Paul I just heard your story read out on 2GB Australian radio 26th minute of the Brian Wiltshire podcast
He got it from page 3 of the Australian newpaper today, who’d picked it up from Booker’s column.
– He then read out Roy W Spencers repost to NASA, then Bamboo economy vs metal.
Podcast : http://www.2gb.com/article/brian-wilshire-highlights-january-28

You are doing an amazing job. Who would have thought that just putting records onto a bar chart would reveal so much of the crap that we are being fed? I do not know what will happen when the enormity of what is being done in the name of climate science will finally hit home upon the general public, but it isn’t going to be pretty. We can be fairly certain that the reputation of all scientists will be diminished. It is very sad.

Excellent work Paul, although a depressing familiar story.
Is it possible to obtain and compare satellite temperature measurements against surface measurements for these specific regions – say for the recent thirty years?

it is the raw daily data for Puerto Casada from NCDC’s Global summary of the day which Mosher swears is unadjusted, and forms the basis of all of BEST’s analysis.

Although they claim to have data from 1974 to the present, the reality is that most of the pre-1995 data is missing, and the post-1995 data is somewhat patchy.

My belief is that a lot of the adjustment issues stem from GCHN’s attempts to “compensate” for this missing data.

There is no way of knowing for sure IMO, whether this represents outright fraud, incompetence driven by confirmation bias, or a genuine attempt to provide a meaningful output from raw data that is an unholy mess to start off with.

Whatever the answer, my take is that all the global surface temperature records should be taken with a very large dose of salt until such a time that it is based on raw data that can provide good global coverage, with minimal need for adjustments, perhaps along the lines of what USCRN is attempting to do.

If that means throwing everything out, and starting over from scratch, so be it.

Firstly, tremendous work, Paul.
Secondly, are there any UK records for you to analyse? Hitting GISS and their pals in the US is one thing, but to bring this to a UK audience including perhaps the British politico’s, maybe need you to discover a CRU / MO adjustment or 3?
Either way, fantastic work so far. You and Mr Goddard won’t be on many environmentalists Christmas card lists, mind. 🙂

Shub and I had an exchange yesterday at JoNova, who had posted on Booker’s column and Paul’s previous post. There is no station metadata for Puerto Casada at NCDC.NOAA.gov. Easy for anyone to check for themselves. BEST shows two moves: one about 1972, the other about 2007. I backdoored in to the BEST raw data summary for station 157455 a/o ye 2013. The file shows two metadata ‘station moves’ based on WMO metadata: one in 2007 and one in 2013. None at all in the entire 1970s decade. So BEST has a station move where its own raw data collection says there was not one, AND does not show one that is clearly flagged. To say the least, this is not confidence inspiring.
Both the raw data file with all its associated explanations and the compile date, and the BEST output for #157455 as of yesterday, have been archived against future Mosher armwaving. Glad to send copies along for Paul to blog upon request.

Tried to get it for over an hour yesterday. Unlike NCDC, there is no easy front door. Did not find a simple back door like for BEST. Since we were looking for the source of BEST station move metadata, stopped trying after found the merged station file ingesting WMO metadata. Only value would have been to see whether it was ingested correctly. By then we realized the much bigger BEST problem highlighted in the comment just above.

Paul, about the inversion (really perversion) of UHI homogenization, it is systemic. It is in NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC (GHCN, nClimDiv), HADCRUT3 (so presumably T4), Australian BOM old HQ and new ACORN, NZ NIWA, and Meteoschweiz at a minimum.. All documented in essay When Data Isn’t in ebook Blowing Smoke.
I have a last technical footnote to that essay discussing two certain logical flaws in all the various homogenization algorithms. One involves regional expectations, illustrated using BEST station 166900. The other involves Menne stitching, illustrated by a 2014 paper in Theor. Appl. Clim.
The interesting question is whether these logical flaws were not spotted due to confirmation bias (you expect warming, you get warming after homogenization, so algorithm good) or something perhaps more sinister.
And, thanks for another fine post.

Homogenisation is just rubbish of course. However, it is perfectly possible that “raw data”, which must always be reported, needs adjustment before use. That adjustment must be performed judiciously, honestly and explicitly. In other words, it needs to be performed by competent people of integrity. Not “Climate Scientists”, then.

I have wondered what a “global” graph might look like, of unadjusted temps only, i.e. discard anything that would have been otherwise “modified”.

When I was in school (I finished before CAGW alarmists started their wailing), that’s what you did: if you suspected any data might be faulty, it was just thrown out; otherwise, it wasn’t true science.

“if you suspected any data might be faulty, it was just thrown out”: that policy would give “Climate Scientists” far too much leeway. They’d just bin whatever they didn’t like, claiming that it was faulty. I’d suggest that you’d need good and explicit reason to think something faulty before you threw it out. (I speak with some feeling here; I once had a research student who had, I discovered, been suppressing data that he thought I wouldn’t like.)

I should add that the adjustments need to be considerably smaller in magnitude than the phenomenon being studied. If the inequality is the other way round then the data are simply unfit for purpose and should not be used.

I would not be surprised if the data was deliberately corrupted recently by warmists in the WMO. My father set up/fixed to specified standrads all the stevensons boxes stations for the WMO in Paraguay during the 70’s (1964-1976). He was an ardent non-believer in AGW from day 1, but retired in 1977

For reasons posted below, I think Big Brother’s Great Social Experiment of 1945-2015 [1] is over and Big Brother correctly identified as the UN after Occam’s razor shaved away seventy years of growth on BB’s chin [2].

Wow, they are getting desperate. That video by Cowtan is hilarious. I can see why he disabled comments on it!
He claims that a drop in temperature ‘would normally indicate a calibration problem’. He’s such a devout believer in global warming that he thinks any instance of cooling is an error.
Then he looks at other nearby stations and says they also show cooling around 1970, so – horror – it might be real. He then cherrypicks one station outside Paraguay that he claims does not show cooling around 1970, though in fact it does. And he claims that this provides an ‘independent check’ on the Paraguay temperature.
He’s speculating, based on no evidence whatsoever, that there was some change in the way Paraguay measured it’s temperatures around 1970.

Another interesting aspect of Kevin Cowton’s video is that he only talks about the Booker’s use of Puerto Casado data. He does not mention the primary source of the data, which was three weather stations at this blog. It will be interesting to see how Cowton reconciles the emerging results on this blog with the NOAA data.

So what’s their explanation ?
“Serious accusations have been levelled against them in the media, yet they have not responded or attempted to defend their data. ” Fair enough Paul … They have the opportunity ..we are all ears.

(Post Comment sticking ? Click the notify checkbox then click it again, then click again in the text box, that seems to free it up)

Thanks Paul, for all your sleuthing and hard work. you have even inspired a Josh cartoon! I haven’t seen this mentioned before so I thought I would post it on your blog. NOAA/NCDC seems to have screwed up their location for Pilar. Not only does it appear to be firmly in the middle of the Rio Paraguay but they also have the country wrong! http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/homr/#ncdcstnid=30085465&tab=LOCATIONS

Using the new HadISD database, I plotted the temps for Pilar since 1973. Using the @slope function in Quattro Pro X5, I calculated the slope of a simple linear regression without interpolation as -0.000002080058562.

Using the new HadISD database, I plotted the temps for Pedro Juan Caballero since 1973. Using the @slope function in Quattro Pro X5, I calculated the slope of a simple linear regression without interpolation as 0.000000580202193.

Using the new HadISD database, I plotted the temps for Concepción since 1973. Using the @slope function in Quattro Pro X5, I calculated the slope of a simple linear regression without interpolation as 0.000000507630755.

Using the new HadISD database, I plotted the temps for San Juan Bautista since 1973. Using the @slope function in Quattro Pro X5, I calculated the slope of a simple linear regression without interpolation as 0.000008465716398.

Using the new HadISD database, I plotted the temps for Encarnación since 1973. Using the @slope function in Quattro Pro X5, I calculated the slope of a simple linear regression without interpolation as 0.000000580202193.

Although mentioned in the link to my first comment, I want to make clear that the HadISD database contains quality controlled (so somewhat adjusted), but not change_point adjusted data. Pilar, Pedro Juan Caballero, Concepción, San Juan Bautista Misiones and Encarnación all appear to be airports. The data is either hourly or every three hours, so no min-max issues. As airports, one would assume that there was at least some effort to maintain and periodically check the calibration of the instruments, as this was needed for aviation. Asunción does not appear in the HadISD database.

It seems hard to me to justify any further adjustments (other than QC-already done) to data from maintained weather stations that show virtually no climate change over four decades. With the exception of Pilar, which has a big gap, it is difficult to justify any change point adjustments, either, as the instruments would need to have been maintained and calibrated on an ongoing basis for aviation purposes. One would also not expect any significant station moves.

What’s required is raw data, which we trust to having random station moves, random measurement errors, random trees shading, then being cut down, etc. I would guess that UHI isn’t random – it’s growing everywhere. But then again, that will add to surface temp anyway.

Automated software changing values needs heavy quality checking where random stations are checked with people on the ground to make sure that there actually have been the changes assumed.

Considering how sparse some of the weather stations are, particularly Africa and over the sea (3/4 of the globe), I would expect the resultant GMST to be up to a degree out. So I don’t credit these little thousandths of degree as being at all relevant. Temperature isn’t rising.

Here is a plot of RAW data from 7 Paraguay stations, 12-month moving averages of monthly anomalies (relative to 1950-60). Regional consistency proves Paul correct, all major temperature changes were consistent across all stations, must be climate not inhomogeneities. Paraguay cooled over the 20th century.

So, according to Paul Homewood, the scientists at GISS and NOAA, who do the temperature analyses are deliberately fudging the raw data from stations all over the world by doing scientifically not justified adjustments, allegedly, only to get a difference between the raw and adjusted data in the global analysis as seen in the left panel of following graphic:

A difference between the raw data and adjusted data that doesn’t make any substantial difference regarding the conclusions drawn from it about the reality of global surface warming. Why would they do all this effort for such little effect? They also could take the raw data instead and make the same statements about global surface warming. Perhaps they do all of this just to deliberately fuel the conspiracy fantasies of the fake skeptic crowd?

The difference is not 50% for the global surface warming trend, which is shown in the left panel. And for the last 35 years, i.e., for the time period of accelerated statistically significant global surface warming, the trends for the raw data and the adjusted data are nearly the same.

You were probably talking about the trend for CONUS, which is shown in the right panel. CONUS covers only about 1.5% of the global surface area. You probably will find instances of larger differences between raw and adjusted data when you look at the averages from only small regions compared to the whole surface area.

Nobody (sane) is accusing anyone of deliberate deception, but there are clearly algorithm errors, a failure to subject results to expert meteorological checking, and POSSIBLY a large amount of expectation bias.

What about you look up in Merriam-Webster what the meaning of “to tamper” is. Or you will have to make it up with the blog host that you doubt his sanity.

If the claim is that there were algorithm errors then the ones who make the claim should show where the error was, present a better algorithm that minimizes biases from non-climatic influences on the temperature record and publish this in a proper specialist journal of the field. That would be an actual contribution to science then. The permanent smearing of scientists is none.

I remember that someone made loud claims regarding the surface temperatures in the US. The world still is waiting for the publication.

present a better algorithm that minimizes biases from non-climatic influences on the temperature record and publish this in a proper specialist journal of the field.

Rubbish!

If your car keeps breaking down and you complain to Ford, what would your reaction be if they said “go and build your own then”?

I have presented plenty of evidence of just why the Arctic adjustments are wrong. A proper scientific reaction would be to address those issues, and either prove they are right or accept they are wrong.

“A proper scientific reaction would be to address those issues, and either prove they are right or accept they are wrong.”

The scientists don’t have the burden to prove or to accept anything, just because some blogger makes some assertions in his opinion blog using some colored animations. If you are not willing to adhere to the same high standards the scientists are mandated to adhere to when they publish their work in the peer reviewed specialist journals of the field you don’t have anything to offer.

If you think you have found an instance with Iceland where the NCDC algorithm does something funky and is eliminating some real temperature variability instead of a non-climatic bias, and you can document it and back it up with evidence from other sources, publish it. Perhaps a GRL paper. Then you also will have a much better basis for the statement that this issue should be addressed by the scientists who are working on the adjustments.

I doubt it would be consequential for the global surface temperature analysis. It would be useful information, though. Then, one would know and have a citeable reference for being careful with using those data for an analysis of the local temperature variability at Iceland, or e.g. for evaluation of model skill.

“I have repeatedly asked NCDC to look into this, and apart from the normal acknowledgements they have utterly failed to respond.”

Understandable. I myself would be reluctant to engage with anyone who repeatedly smeared me in public and also, when it is as easy to show that claims by you are wrong, like the ones about the station at Akureyri on Iceland.

After I have checked this I rather doubt that you really can make a case, even about Iceland, and I think it would be rather foolish to believe anything you say.

In any public organisation, whether scientific or otherwise, if a legitimate complaint is made questioning accuracy of data or quality of work, that organisation has a duty to properly investigate and respond.

Why would anyone refer to a last years post at Climate etc instead of addressing the actual data presented in this post?
Come on Jan refute the Icelandic data, where there is historic records confirming the pre adjusted data is correct.
Come on JUSTIFY the adjustments.

Why would anyone refer to a last years post at Climate etc instead of addressing the actual data presented in this post?

Why do I show the graphic from the other blog post? Because I want to challenge the ones who accuse the scientists of committing science fraud to explain to me why those accused scientists would go through all the effort of “tampering” with station data from all over the world just to get something that doesn’t make any difference regarding the conclusions of the reality of global surface warming. Or to get something that even counters the statement of accelerated statistically significant global surface warming since the 1970ies, when global warming really took off. Considering the risk for the scientists that would come with such a doing regarding their reputation, professional career and livelihood. What would they have to gain from this that outweights the risk?

“Come on Jan refute the Icelandic data, where there is historic records confirming the pre adjusted data is correct.”

I have made it perfectly clear in my post that the adjustments have had the effect of removing much of the 1940’s spike, and consequently have the effect of increasing the warming trend since then.

All of the graphs are shown in the post as well for all to see.

However, you do raise a useful point. Because the cooling adj took place in the middle of the station’s record, they have little effect on the overall trend, in this case since 1883. They do however have a large effect on the trend since 1940.
We need to bear this in mind when people claim that globally adjustments tend to cancel themselves out.

Yes typical Cherry Picking, why not give us your thoughts on all of the stations that have been changed, not just one of those that shows little cahnge, you could choose another couple that have hardly changed, but what about the ones that show drastic changes.
Remember the RAW Temperatures were real and did not need any adjustment, or would you rather believe in a dumb Computer Algorithm over the IMO and historical data?

Consistent (across stations) changes in temperature are not necessarily climatic in origin. In Paraguay it might have gone like this: Eliza’s dad went around Paraguay (around 1970) installing Stevenson screen systems IN PARALLEL with whatever was there before, which was probably not as good in screening out radiation, i.e. would have been reporting too hot. When the last one was ready they may have switched simultaneously to reporting only the Stevenson data, which probably makes sense from a weather forecasting point of view.

Comparison with data from neighboring countries should resolve the issue.

If that were the case then surely it would have been noted in the Station logs.
Or are we trying to say that they were totally incompetent as GISS appear to be implying about most North American and Icelandic Stations as well.

Seems like there may have been a big upheaval in 1970, with some stations being moved from Navy (yep, even in land-locked Paraguay) ships on rivers onto land, but would they have done that as simultaneously as the data suggests?

while the official GCOS Regional Action Plan for South America implies these other stations were equally likely to have been “in such a state of disrepair”, before circa 2005, that they cannot be relied on for useful climate data

I feel sorry for the inhabitants of Puerto Casada, which seems to be the focal point for several strange cults. The town has been bought up by The Moonies, there is a band of eco-warriors who extort money from farmers, but maybe strangest of all are the people examining their temperature records to support their bizarre beliefs.

I’ve only just discovered this blog and I love the info re Paraguay. Thanks! When trying to convince friends that CAGW is a myth, I need evidence they can believe in or at least puts doubts in their minds. I have a question though. Has anyone found evidence that earlier temperatures being adjusted up and more recent temperatures being adjusted down, i.e. the reverse of this pattern in Paraguay. If it’s all one way traffic, then a lukewarmer could begin to doubt the validity of the temperature record and hopefully begin to scrutinise other parts of the mantra.

Thanks for the reply. Adjusting downwards to allow for UHI in recent times makes perfect sense to me. Adjusting down earlier, and up in modern times doesn’t make sense unless one is trying to hide something… like a decline! Cheers 🙂